"Federal district judge Dale A. Kimball has handed down the final judgment in the SCO case. The decision dismisses SCO's latest claims, grants declaratory relief to Novell, and sustains the court's previous judgment that SCO owes Novell over $2.54 million (plus interest) for unjust enrichment."

What gets me about this is how SCO could seriously think that a group of people who's goal is to write open code would simply go and rip off other code, then release it as their own and then encourage people to review it.

Do they really think that of all people the kernel developers would gamble that nobody would notice?

The only good thing I can see from this whole event is that the Linux kernel is clean against UNIX SVRX copyrights.

No it doesn't. It just established that Novell owns the UNIX SVRX copyrights. Luckily for us, Novell understands there is greater chance of a longer term profit in selling linux, than suing it. From the SCO vs IBM documents it doesn't appear that likely that there is any infringement, but that hasn't officially been decided by a court of law.

"The only good thing I can see from this whole event is that the Linux kernel is clean against UNIX SVRX copyrights.

No it doesn't. It just established that Novell owns the UNIX SVRX copyrights. Luckily for us, Novell understands there is greater chance of a longer term profit in selling linux, than suing it. From the SCO vs IBM documents it doesn't appear that likely that there is any infringement, but that hasn't officially been decided by a court of law. "

Technically correct.

As Novell release a full Linux distro, including the kernel under the GPL license, I think that would prohibit them from suing for copyright infringement.

SCO had complete access to (Novell's) UNIX code, and also to the entire development history of IBM's AIX, and of course Linux code just as everyone else does, and a HUGE incentive to find any infringement.

In over two years of searching, they eventually came up with ... not one line of copied code.

Not one line.

I would conclude then that by far the largest factor that would prevent anyone at all going after Linux for violating UNIX copyrights is the simple fact that Linux code is not a copy of UNIX code.

Linux is a UNIX work-alike, but not a UNIX copy.

Then again ... Windows is a VMS work-alike, not a VMS copy, and yet somehow I never see anyone ever speculating about someone going after Windows for violation of VMS copyrights.

Let it rest. Linux is not a copy of anything. It is legitimately-authored original code, designed to oeprate in a similar way to UNIX. Perfectly legal.

Microsoft will just have to learn to try to honestly compete with something for a change.